A Guide to the Villages and Wine Route of Alsace

Alsace is a region in France, famous for its picturesque villages, towns, vineyards, and is a perfect place to explore the French countryside. Many of its villages are members of the Les Plus Beaux Villages de France (“The most beautiful villages of France”) association. The Route des Vins d’Alsace (Wine route of Alsace) is an approximately 170-kilometre-long road, crossing the main wine producing areas of the region.

The region is filled with the cutest and most colourful half-timbered houses (Half-timbering refers to a structure with a frame of load-bearing timber, creating spaces between the timbers which are then filled-in with some kind of nonstructural material. The frame is often left exposed on the exterior of the building). The abundance of such houses in this region & in adjacent parts of Germany is likely because of the flooding in the area and half-timbered houses were easy to knock down and move around and due to the availability of the right timber. Most of these were built when Alsace was part of Germany.

We based ourselves in the town of Colmar, but the quaint little villages are what stole our hearts.

How to get to Colmar –

We took the overnight FlixBus from Amsterdam

How to get around the Area –

We rented bicycles from Vélodocteurs, Colmar for 2 day trips.

Day 1 : Colmar -> Ribeauville -> Hunawihr -> Riquewihr -> Ammerschwihr -> Colmar

This trip was for around 8 hours including stops at Ribeauville and Riquewihr. The route is quite hilly and I would definitely recommend renting e-bikes.

Ribeauville

Enroute Ribeauvillé

L-R : Vol u vent, Foie Gras Baeckeoffe from D’baecka Ofa Stub; Kougelhopf, Eclair, Mille-feuille and Macaron from Gilg

Riquewihr

Enroute Riquewihr

The village of Hunawihr

I saw more varieties of roses in these 2 days than I had seen in my lifetime. Big, small, different colours, in big fat bunches, in huge creepers

Alsatian folk dance and music

Day 2 : Colmar -> Kaysersberg -> Egusheim -> Colmar

This trip was around 6 hours including stops at both the villages. The e-bikes were rented out and we did this route on normal cycles. Apart from a few really steep hills, the route was fairly good.

Colmar

At Au Croissant Doré, a nostalgic little cafe run by Claudine. When we were there for breakfast, she was running the cafe all by herself. It was so inspiring to see her making coffee, writing bills, remembering each order, serving baked goods and running through the cafe. Such a cute little hard working grandma! Managed to talk to her with the 2-3 French words I knew 😛 See the empty basket in the 1st picture – she ran out of all the croissants and Pain au chocolat for the day. That’s how home run it is.

L-R : Cordon Bleu at Ô Cordon Bleu; Crème brûlée at Brasserie l’Auberge

Kaysersberg

Huge roses everywhere!

Or wildly growing. I’ve never seen such big bunches of roses!

Tarte Flambe and Tarte a l’Oignon from Bratschall Manala

Egusheim

What a beautiful trip giving us an insight into the beauty and grace of the French countryside. Though the vineyards were not blooming yet, the wineries nearby were giving out such a warm smell of raisin bread 🙂